Three people abducted near North Darfur’s Sortony

Three people have been abducted and two were wounded in an attack by militiamen near Sortony in North Darfur on Thursday. Water tankers of aid organisations have stopped delivering water to the displaced people in Tawila locality.

The coordinator of the camps for displaced people in Kabkabiya locality reported to Radio Dabanga that seven members of a paramilitary group attacked a group of people on their way back from the farms, south of Sortony camp.

They opened fire and abducted three of them. Two have been wounded, including Ahmed Mohamed Bilal, aged 36 years, Musa Haroun (37) and Mohamad Adam Rabi (47). The coordinator said that the abducted were taken into the direction of Bir Kobe, 5 kilometres west of Sortony.

On Thursday, people who have been displaced by this year's fighting in Darfur demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the AU-UN Mission in Darfur (Unamid) in Tawila. They protest against the organisations’ stop of water supply. No water tanker has delivered water to the camps since Monday.

Unamid plans to resolve the problem within two weeks

Omda Mukhtar Bosh told Radio Dabanga: “About a thousand women demonstrated in front of the headquarters carrying water tins in protest against UN Children’s Agency (Unicef), Doctors Without Borders, and the World Food Programme which stopped the water tanker services.”

Bosh said that members of Unamid then told the protesters that the problem will be resolved within two weeks. No cause of the halted service was mentioned.

Tens of thousands of litres are trucked in to camps in North Darfur: in Sortony, where 22,000 displaced have taken refuge, Oxfam and the Unicef trucked in 198,000 litres of water during one week in November.

Fire consumes camp homes

In South Darfur, a massive fire broke out in the early hours of Wednesday morning at camp El Salam in Nyala. More than 100 homes and their contents, besides several farm animals, food, agricultural crops, and consumer goods, were destroyed.

Camp Sheikh Mahjoub Tabeldiya reported the incident to this station and added that “approximately 700 people affected people are now left in the open without shelter, food and cover”.

He appealed to the State, the local authorities and humanitarian organisations to speed up the provision of aid, especially under the severe cold of the winter season.